Agawa Canyon Tour Train

In September 1918 three painters had a railway company shunt them a boxcar. It was number 10557, painted red, and the Algoma Central left it on sidings north of Sault Ste. Marie wherever Lawren Harris, J. E. H. MacDonald and Frank Johnston wanted to work. Its first stop was the Agawa River, in the gorge that is now the Agawa Canyon. They came back every year until 1923, and what they brought out of that country became the Group of Seven — the closest thing Canada has to a national school of painting. The railway they used is still there, and the canyon still has no road.

What runs today is a single train, once a day, for eleven weeks a year. It leaves the depot at 87 Huron Street at eight in the morning, climbs 114 miles north through the hills of the Canadian Shield, drops 500 feet down the wall of the canyon in the last ten of them, and stops on the floor of a park you cannot drive to. Ninety minutes later it turns round and comes back, reaching the Sault at six. There is no other passenger train left on the Algoma Central: the service to Hearst, 296 miles up the line, was withdrawn in 2015.

That gives the day an unusual shape. This is not a train that takes you somewhere — it is a train that takes you and brings you back, and the whole point is the four hours of forest, trestle and river in between. The autumn fortnight is what the operator sells hardest and what the season is built around, but the canyon is the same canyon in August, with fewer people on the stairs.

The Algoma Central was never meant to carry tourists. Francis Hector Clergue chartered it on 11 August 1899 to bring logs to his pulp mill and iron ore from the Helen Mine, near Wawa, down to the steelworks he was building at Sault Ste. Marie. His holding company went bankrupt in 1903 with the line 56 miles from anywhere; construction resumed in 1909, and in 1914 the rails finally reached Hearst, 296 miles north, where they met the National Transcontinental. For most of the century after that the railway hauled ore, pulpwood and lumber, and ran a passenger train for the trappers, cottagers and canoeists who had no other way in.

The excursion grew out of that. Track was laid through the Agawa Canyon in the winter of 1911; in 1952 the railway cleared a picnic ground on the canyon floor; and in the 1960s it began advertising the place. It worked far better than anyone expected. Through the 1970s and 1980s about a hundred thousand people a year came, and to move them the Algoma Central ran the longest passenger trains in North America — twenty to twenty-four cars, occasionally thirty, with two dining cars in the middle.

The line has changed hands three times since. Wisconsin Central bought it in February 1995, Canadian National bought Wisconsin Central in October 2001, and CN withdrew the Sault–Hearst passenger train in 2015, leaving the tour train as a separate business. In March 2021 Watco announced it was buying the railway; the sale closed in 2022, and the southern half — Sault Ste. Marie to Oba — now trades as the Agawa Canyon Railroad. The tour train came with it. The 2020 season was cancelled for the pandemic; every year since has run.

What pulls it, and what you sit in

Two EMD F40PHs in maroon, carrying the Agawa Canyon Tour Train's own crest on the nose and Watco's WAMX leasing marks on the flank; 112 is one of them. It is a locomotive with a good pedigree for this work — a 3,000-horsepower cowl unit built from 1975 with a generator on board to light and heat the train, the type that became the backbone of Amtrak's diesel fleet and still leads VIA Rail's long-distance trains today. Behind them come the stainless-steel coaches with their big tinted windows, and at the tail, newly added to the consist, the Stone Gardner: a restored twenty-four-seat theatre car with a plate-glass rear window and eight swivel chairs, which costs three times the coach fare and includes everything you eat.

The commentary is triggered by GPS rather than a guard with a microphone, so it fires as each landmark arrives: the Ojibway history of the country, the fur traders, the entrepreneurs who cut it open. It plays in English through the coaches, with French, German, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin on wireless headsets. Cameras on the locomotive feed flat screens down the length of the train, which is the only way anyone in a coach gets the engineer's view of the canyon descent. There is no Wi-Fi.

Four hours up

The forest closes in within minutes of leaving the Sault and does not really open again. This is the Canadian Shield: mixed hardwood and conifer over granite, broken by lakes and rivers, with the line picking its way between them on cuttings and steel trestles. Searchmont — named for the treasurer of Clergue's holding company — comes and goes; so does Hubert. There is no road alongside for most of it, which is exactly what made this country worth painting and still makes it worth riding.

The one moment everybody photographs before the canyon is mile 92, where the railway crosses the Montreal River on 1,550 feet of curved steel trestle, 130 feet above the water and its hydroelectric dam. Nothing on the ground gets you there. Ten miles short of the end, at mile 102, the line tips over the rim and begins the descent: 500 feet in ten miles, hard against the top of the canyon wall, with the river appearing and disappearing below. The walls stand 575 feet above the water at their highest. The gorge itself was opened by faulting more than 1.2 billion years ago, widened by ice that retreated ten thousand years back, and finished by the Agawa River.

Ninety minutes at mile 114

Then the rails stop. The park is a strip of flat ground beside the river with a few wooden buildings, picnic tables, restrooms and five short trails: Ed Foote, Otter Creek, River, Talus and the Lookout. The stop is a picnic and the operator plans for it: bring a small lunch cooler and non-alcoholic drinks, or pre-order a box when you book and collect it on board. There is a snack and beverage canteen in the cars and a gift shop, and neither takes cash — nothing on the train does. Four waterfalls come off the rim — Bridal Veil at 68.5 metres, the two Black Beaver falls at 53.3, Otter Creek at 13.7. The Lookout Trail is 300 steps and gravel path up the wall to a platform 250 feet above the rails, and ninety minutes is enough to climb it and get back only if you go straight there. While you are up on the wall the locomotives uncouple and run round to the other end of the train, and at the appointed moment it leaves, with or without you. The return takes four and a half hours.

There is one departure a day and it is the same departure every day. The train leaves Sault Ste. Marie at 08:00, reaches Agawa Canyon at about 12:00, stands there for ninety minutes, and is back at the depot at 18:00. The operator's own words are that it "will leave promptly at 8 a.m."; boarding opens beforehand, so allow time for parking and the gift shop.

The 2026 season runs from 1 August to 18 October, seven days a week, with no rest day and no extra service. That is the whole year: nothing runs in winter, spring or early summer, and the booking calendar is empty on either side of those dates. The season is short and it moves — check before you plan a trip around it.

Timings within the day are the operator's own split, not a station-by-station timetable: four hours up, ninety minutes at the canyon, four and a half hours back. There are no intermediate stops and no way to join or leave the train anywhere but the Sault. The extra half hour on the return is in the published schedule, not a delay.

Every seat is reserved and the train sells out, most reliably in the peak weeks from mid- September. The Stone Gardner car at the tail has twenty-four seats and was already on a waiting list for early-September dates when this page was checked.

As of September 2026. Departures confirmed against the operator's live booking calendar, which was swept day by day across the whole season. Check current dates and times at agawatrain.com (opens in a new tab).

Two fare bands, both sold direct by the operator and confirmed at the checkout. From 1 August to 14 September an adult pays CA$154, a senior over sixty CA$125, a child of three to twelve CA$78, and an infant under two travels free on a lap. From 15 September to 18 October there is one flat fare of CA$170 for everybody, which is the operator's way of saying that this is the fortnight people actually come for.

Everything is reserved and the train has no walk-up option. Refunds do not exist unless you add Trip Protection at checkout, at ten per cent of the ticket, which then buys a full refund at any time before departure; if the operator cancels for weather you get your money back either way. Parking at the depot is free, food and drink can be pre-ordered when you book, and nothing on board takes cash — the canteen and the gift shop are card only.

Fares as of September 2026.

No rail pass applies to this train, and there is nothing to research further.

The Agawa Canyon Tour Train is a private excursion sold by the ticket, not a scheduled service on anybody's network. It is not VIA Rail, so VIA's two Corridor discount cards — which in any case only cover Québec City to Windsor — have nothing to do with it. Interrail and Eurail do not exist in Canada. The Canrailpass is gone. Ontario Northland, the province's other passenger operator, sells no pass either.

What does exist is the operator's own concession structure, applied automatically at booking rather than bought in advance: seniors over sixty and children of three to twelve pay less in the summer band, and infants under two travel free on a lap all season. In the peak band from 15 September the concessions disappear and everyone pays the same flat fare. Group bookings for parties large enough to need their own car are arranged directly with the operator.

Checked September 2026 against the operator's fare table and its booking engine.

This journey has exactly two stops, and one of them has no road. Agawa Canyon Park is the whole reason for the train, and ninety minutes is what you get: enough for the falls, or for the Lookout Trail, but not comfortably for both. Decide which before you arrive, and start walking as soon as you are off the steps.

Everything else is in Sault Ste. Marie, and the train's schedule leaves you no daylight for it — out at eight, back at six. The city is worth a second day either side. The waterfront boardwalk starts a few minutes from the depot and runs east past the 1895 canal; the Bushplane Centre and the Ermatinger Clergue site are both within a short walk or a very short drive of it; and the Art Gallery of Algoma on East Street, free to enter and closed on Sundays, holds Group of Seven work painted on the line you have just ridden.

Bring proof of citizenship if you are crossing from Michigan. Americans from Washington, Minnesota, South Dakota, Michigan, New York or Vermont may use an enhanced driver's licence or identification card; everyone else needs a passport.

There is nowhere to stay along the route. The canyon has no accommodation of any kind, the line has no intermediate stop, and the train comes back the same day — so every bed on this journey is in Sault Ste. Marie, and the only question is how far from the depot at 87 Huron Street you want to be.

An eight o'clock departure with boarding beforehand argues for walking distance. Downtown, along Bay Street and the waterfront boardwalk, is close enough to walk from; the larger places out on Great Northern Road towards the highway are a short drive and have more space and more pools. Parking at the depot is free either way, so a car is no obstacle.

Book early for the peak weeks. The train sells out from mid-September, and the town fills up with it.